Firebombs hit studio of Russian-Jewish film director reviled by nationalists

(JTA) – Firebombs were hurled at the studio of a renowned Russian-Jewish film director who is reviled by some nationalists for his controversial depiction of the love affair between Russia’s last czar and a ballerina.

The firebombs hit the windows of Alexei Uchitel’s studio in St. Petersburg on Wednesday night, causing a fire that did not spread into the studio’s interior and was extinguished before it could cause serious damage to the building, RIA Novosti reported.

Uchitel, whose film “Matilda” about the extramarital love affair of Nicholas II and the ballet dancer Matilda Kshesinskaya is set to premiere in October, told the Russian news agency that he did not know who perpetrated the attack.

The film has prompted protests by many devout Christians and several groups representing them, the news site Jewish.ru reported. They complained that the steamy sex scenes featured in the film were immoral, and that the characterization of the relationship between the monarch and the ballerina was historically false as well as an insult to Russia’s national honor.

Historians who have written about their relationship say that Nicholas II became fascinated with Kshesinskaya after seeing her left breast during a recital in 1890 due to a wardrobe malfunction.

The film was the subject of a parliamentary review, commissioned by a conservative prosecutor from Crimea who became a lawmaker in the Russian parliament for the party of President Vladimir Putin following Russia’s annexation of that territory from Ukraine in 2014.

Poklonskaya commissioned a four-member panel to review the film, including specialists in religious studies, literature and psychology.

The panel’s 40-page report stated that “Matilda” was an assault on Nicholas’s character. Despite ample documentation of his affair with the dancer in personal letters the two had exchanged, the report called their affair a “myth.”

Separately, a monument for Communist fighters from the Soviet Union and beyond was defaced with anti-Semitic slogans in Madrid, Spain.

The monument for the International Brigades — a name for units of foreigners, including many Russians, who fought in Spain’s civil war during the 1930s against pro-fascist militias — was defaced Wednesday by unidentified individuals, Europe Press reported. They wrote the word “murderers” and drew a Star of David on the monument, as well as a symbol favored by White supremacists. Another Madrid monument honoring Spaniards who died fighting against Nazi Germany during World War II was defaced with graffiti reading “Jewish murderers” and White supremacist symbols.

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